Overdose
by presidentallosaurus
Summary: Stolen Ice AU. Takes place post-Ch. 51. Anna goes through an opiate overdose.
1. Overdose

_I don't own Frozen. Stolen Ice and its characters belong to Aesla. **This fanfic takes place after the events of chapter 51.**_

* * *

_"Hm. That's sad." Olaf said. Jane was busy at the computers, each screen a vague, indistinct blur of activity. "Would that have happened if you had been there?"_

_"What would have, Olaf?" Jane muttered._

_"The selective search program running on local radio chatter has given a hit. Medical care units have picked up someone matching Ms. Anna's description. Attempting to confirm from local feeds... yes, it's her." _

_Jane's eye twitched and her head whipped around to look at Olaf. "What? What for? An accident?"_

_"They were called in for an opioid overdose."_

_"What?! God DAMNIT, Anna!" Jane slammed her hands down on the keyboard rest, causing a scattering of trash and papers to float to the floor. "How serious is it? Have they identified her?"_

_"Ms. Anna was unresponsive when they arrived. Low heart rate, unresponsive. Right now she's a Jane Doe."_

_"Will she be okay for the short term?"_

_"Too soon to tell. Symptoms suggest severe overdose, but she's stable."_

_Jane held her head down, gritting her teeth. "Okay. Fine. I can deal with it later."_

_"How do you know there will be a later?" Olaf inquired._

_"I don't have a choice, Olaf." Jane growled. "I'm a little busy right now... making things right."_

_"If you are making things right, why are you here and not there?" Olaf asked. _

_Jane paused, staring a hole through Olaf, muttering a string of expletives before becoming able to speak. "...Fucking hell, Olaf. Fuck it. Fine. Arrange for a transfer and prepare to erase records after interception. We'll use the auxiliary safe house I had set up for this."_

* * *

Anna cracked an eye open unsteadily, becoming aware she was in a dimly lit room. It resembled a minamalistic, sparse hospital room, with no curtains and only Anna's bed. One wall was taken up by Jane's computer screens.. and Jane herself, an indistinct figure sitting in a plain chair nearby.

Anna exhaled slowly, tongue touching still fading-blue lips. Her skin felt clammy. It was hard to think, but getting easier. Her stomach was upset. She couldn't feel her toes. She was very, very cold. Her breathing was shallow and it was difficult to make herself breath harder and deeper. When she closed her eyes she felt like she was suddenly in a vast, empty, cavernous space, and grew dizzy and disturbed. She tried to keep her eyes open.

Her hand hit the metal ledge keeping her stable in the bed, causing a quiet smack. Jane looked over and ran her fingers through her hair, standing up stiffly.

"Hi." Jane said quietly, her voice hard.

Anna looked over at Jane, blinked slowly, then turned to look back at the ceiling, sighing. "...hi."

_**"Do you know where you are?"**_ Jane's voice echoed in Anna's ears. It didn't sound like Jane's voice.

"Hosp'tal room." Anna mumbled.

_**"Can you tell me your name?"**_

Anna rolled her head back at Jane, staring at her dully. Jane folded her arms across her midsection, glaring. Anna said nothing.

"WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!" Jane sounded like Jane again. "Drugs, Anna? DRUGS?! Of all the goddamn things to go out and do-?" She cut herself off, seething. Pulling a prescription bottle from her pocket, she shook it in front of Anna. Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, a mess of Tramadol rattled around inside it. "What were you thinking?" She repeated.

Anna swallowed. Her throat was dry and clammy as the rest of her. "I wasn't." She admitted.

"Obviously!" Jane shouted. "Were you trying to kill yourself?"

Anna stayed quiet, staring at the ceiling stoicly.

"... were you trying to kill yourself, Anna?"

"I don't know." Anna admitted. "I knew I was taking too much, but it.. I wasn't thinking. I just didn't want the high to end."

"Why? Why did you even start?"

Anna barked out a short laugh, then began to cough. The effort made Jane turn into a blur for a moment, and her voice echoed against the walls. _"__**Are you okay?"**_

"M'fine." She muttered, waiting. The blurring eventually stopped, and Jane was distinctly Jane again, waiting.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this." Anna said, studying the ceiling. "At first it was just for the pain. I've never- I don't remember ever having an injury like this before. I just took them as needed. And it was.. it was nice, for a little while, every time the high came. I felt okay for a while. Like I had everything under control."

"You started taking them to deal with..." Jane gestured to her head. "Up here?"

"You could say that."

"Damnit, Anna, look at me. You're ruining your body and your life. This is serious."

"Why?" Anna rolled her head over. "You're not real. This is just a fucked up dream. I've had it before. During... during other times." She admitted.

"Other...? Anna, pinch yourself if you don't think this is real. This isn't a dream."

"That's what they all say." Anna muttered, raising her hand to her shoulder and giving herself a pinch. She didn't flinch. "See?"

"...That's the goddamn opiates in your system. Look at me, Anna." Anna tried to obey. Jane's eyes seemed to fill up the room. Disapproval. Anger. Frustration. "Taking this shit, to deal with your problems, is not okay. It's running from them. It's avoiding them."

"Like you're any different." Anna snipped. Jane's eyes narrowed dangerously.

"So take it from someone with experience. How many times have you done this? Tell me."

"...I don't know." She admitted, looking at the ceiling again, tired of looking into Jane's anger. "I don't know right now. I can't.. I'm not thinking clearly. Obviously. This fucked up dream again."

"This is REAL, Anna. REAL consequences to fucking up. You could have died." Jane's voice began to sound distant, but Anna's vision was only getting clearer. "You could have fucking died, Anna. You could have..."

"If this was real, it would have been worth it." Anna said. "You coming in, pulling me out, saving me, taking me home. Talking to me. Being with me. Yeah, it's pathetic, isn't it? I guess that's what I am. Pathetic." Jane was silent. "I guess that's me. I'm selfish, remember? You told me to think about what I want? ... you. I want your presence. Your company. I wanna deal with this with you. I can't go back to who I was anymore. I can't go back to that life, living by myself. I want to LIVE and SHARE my life. With you. Together." She squeezed her eyes shut, trying and failing to stop a stream of tears. There was only silence. "Fuck. I almost believed it was _real_ this time..."

"But the reality is I'm all alone." Anna whispered to the empty hospital room. Nurses and patients streamed past the open door outside as Anna struggled to hold back her tears.


	2. Despair

_I don't own Frozen. Stolen Ice and its characters belong to Aesla. **This fanfic takes place after the events of chapter 51 and was written before future chapters were published.**_

* * *

Somewhere after 9 pm, Anna left the general store with two bags of "groceries". She'd chosen her apartment based on the convenience of the variety of "supplies" the general store sold. She visited frequently enough that the cashiers knew her and more importantly, knew not to question her choice of purchases.

"Hey, Fox, you forgot your change!" The cashier called out, looking at the scattered bills Anna had tossed on the counter.

"Keep it." A mumbled as the door swung shut behind her. She walked with bad posture, shoulders bent forward, carrying the bags like she was dragging them. Her hair was flat and unbraided, combed into a shrinking violet shield that covered half her face so she didn't have to look at people. She wore glasses, not that she needed them, but just to add to the disguise, place another barrier between herself and the world. An equally useless hearing aid was stuffed into her ear, hampering her hearing but giving her an excuse not to have to talk to people.

She crossed the street without looking and didn't react when the sound of screeching and honking blared against her dampened ear, only muttering an apology and a few stilted words about being deaf when the driver got out of the car, placating them enough that they let her walk away.

Her apartment was just a short trip through a dank alleyway occasionally home to a few homeless, troubled teens and listless youths. They'd cleared out after she made an example out of one of them.

_A white kid hardly younger than herself had approached her, knife drawn. She'd set her bags down before he grabbed her arm and shoved her against the alley wall, pressing the blade into her throat. A grabbed his wrist and slammed her knee into his privates before twisting that wrist and stomping as hard as she could against the boy's foot. He'd cried out and fallen to the ground on one knee, dropping the knife. He took a swing at her. She'd taken her tazer out already and ducked the blow, given him a jab in the side for good measure to the sound of buzzing electricity, leaving the boy curled up on the ground, sobbing. _

_She didn't bother picking her scattered bags back up, choosing to order a pizza instead of going back to the store. She asked for her usual while she rubbed the small cut on her throat. Yes, extra bell peppers, please._

Her apartment door had six locks on it, four of them only on the inside for extra protection when she was actually there. Dropping her bags on her kitchen counter she unplugged the hearing aid, and grabbed at the glasses, discarding them on a dresser as she tucked her hair behind an ear. Home in the Hole again.

Eggs, milk, a six pack of hard cider, a bottle of cough syrup - dextromorphan only, please, a box of cereal, a small bottle of unmarked pills, bread. Aspirin for the morning, laughably.

She grabbed a bottle of cider and cracked it open, sipping from it as she headed for the bathroom. Her medicine cabinet looked like a war zone, pills scattered everywhere, but she plucked a few out. She stared at them for a moment, trying to account for how many she had already had that day. Tossing back her head and popping the pills, she washed it down with the cider.

Almost immediately her stomach lurched and revolted against the overkill, and she choked, then retched into the toilet, falling to her knees until her body had heaved as much of it as it could out of her system. She reached blindly for the bottle of pink sitting on top of the bathroom sink just for these situations, peeled open the cap and drank. She sat on the bathroom floor until the taste was rotting in her mouth, and swigged the cider round her mouth, swallowing.

Anna pulled herself up and stared at herself in the mirror, taking note of the bags under her eyes, the dull look in her eyes.

_Despair._ Despair is more of a hole than an emotion. It's a filter placed over perception, an unspeakable weight that tugs on every thought, feeling, action. Despair is closer to acceptance than depression. It's when you stop fighting but you keep moving, dragging your burdens behind. Despair is crossing the street without looking both ways in the evening. Despair is never going to sleep, only ever passing out. It's knowingly destroying your body for short-term control, short-term pleasure, short-term gain. Despair is a place you are, not a thing you feel.

Stumbling out of the bathroom, Anna ignored the sick feeling in her stomach. There was nothing she could do about it. No, nothing. She craned her head up to look at the open vent over her head, waiting for a few moments. No, nothing.

Sliding her cider atop her computer desk, Anna pulled up one of the books from the stack next to the chair and curled up in it, taking solace in the glow of three computer screens. Not many at all compared to hers, but it was a testament at least to the multi-tasking prowess she was developing.

Coding. Programming. Backdoors. These were her nights, studying manuals, reading books, practicing. She'd learned quickly but plateaued fast. She could mess around with traffic lights now. She knew it was child's play, though. She kept reading. The engineering aspects were the hardest for her. Binary codes and newtons.

She didn't even understand the language but she'd forced herself to learn how to speak a few phrases in 'Binary.' It was like speaking Morse code, only a thousand times worse. She'd written a program that translated her sentences to binary gibberish and repeated them until her throat hurt and her ears no longer could make out the difference between zero and one. Someday she'd be able to say hello.

It was all she had.

When the cold faded from her veins, the pain in her stomach began to return, and the cider bottles were all empty, she forced herself to look at the time. Sunrise in a few hours.

Her body screamed at her not to, but she forced herself through a series of exercises. They were pale imitations of what she'd seen her doing. Cardio, hand weights, stretching exercises. She'd never catch up.

She'd never catch _her._ She would try. She would not succeed.

Anna slumped, exhausted and sweaty, onto the mattress in the corner, a mess of covers and pillows softening the blow. She stared at the corner of the room where the vent was. That was the reason she'd chosen this room. That vent. Wide enough for a person. She didn't expect anyone to be coming through it. She'd placed a chair underneath it anyways.

Her body sick with medicines and her head pounding, she popped a sleeping pill and stared at the ceiling.

Despair is when you're waiting to be saved, and you've accepted that you're never going to be.


	3. Lights

_I don't own Frozen. Stolen Ice and its characters belong to Aesla. __**This fanfic takes place after the events of Chapter 51 and was written before future chapters were published.**_

* * *

With a violent heave, Anna pulled herself over the ledge of the museum's roof and collapsed on the ground, taking in deep breaths to steady herself as she let her duffel bag rest on the ground beside her. She was clad in black clothing and a beanie, her braids tucked behind her head but dragging over her shoulders.

She forced herself to reach out and grab the rope she'd been climbing, pulling on it to drag it off the side of the building and out of sight. Standing, still breathing hard, she stumbled over to the rooftop access shack and kneeled beside the door, prying open a power access box. The duffel bag came down and she pulled out a cheap laptop, rapid-firing fingerstrokes and glancing up at the control panel. Hefting a small box out of the duffel bag, she pressed it solidly against the access box and connected it to the laptop.

Step two complete.

Dragging her hook-pulley system out of the rest of the bag, Anna slipped her fingers around her bottle in the back and tossed it back, swallowing a few pills. She spat a mouthful of spit out and chucked the bottle back in to the duffel bag, kicked the rooftop access door open and descended, eyes on the ceiling.

_She'd stared at the plans for hours. How did she make it look so easy? Two floors down. Up and into the tunnels. Three rights, two lefts. She'd be visible underneath the skylight but there were no cameras outside that would catch her through it. Get the party started, descend, grab the diamond, and get out before anyone was the wiser. It was a quick and easy grab, but if she was caught there'd be no talking her way out. It scared her._

Anna bent her fingers, hooked them around the edge of the vent, and pulled herself up, struggling and kicking the whole way, squirming like a fish into the tight space.

_Her hands were calloused from working out in the vent in the corner- up, down, up, down.. It was like pull ups from hell. When she felt like she had the stamina, she'd throw in actually crawling through the vent, focusing on stealth, not speed. She still couldn't navigate the vertical tunnels silently. She was only Anna._

She dropped out from the vent onto the ceiling support beams, some fifty feet above her target. Narrow beams, thinner than her feet were wide. The support she'd need to hook herself up to was still a few paces away.

_She practiced on an old gymnastic beam set up in her condo at first. Walk from end to end, then skip. Do it again until she would fall, get up, crawl back on, keep going. She tried to cartwheel only once before and her body's twisting had hit something near her stomach, and that was the end of her attempt. Her back slammed into the beam and she toppled off, crying out. She dug at her pocket desperately, but the bottle she pulled out was empty. Cursing, she threw it across the floor and just laid there, clutching herself, praying that nothing was bleeding internally._

She crossed slowly at first, one careful foot in front of another, then broke into a short run and cartwheeled, crossing the rest of the beam with a flourish. Hooking the pulley system up as quickly as she could-

_"Again." She muttered, disconnecting the tangled ropes and weights. Again she set it up as fast as she could, dropping a weight, missing a thread. If this was for real she'd have dropped the whole damn thing on someone's head twice already. Only when she successfully set the damn thing up did she take a moment's breath._

_"Again."_

Anna fished her phone out from her back pocket and quickly swiped across to her customized program. She'd set this part of the plan up earlier today, dropping off a 'package' near one of the blocky sculptures in the museum's east wing, disguising it as one of the sculpture's own boxes. That had been Step One.

She couldn't help but grin smugly to herself as she hit _PartyStart__._ There were now a few loose possums in the east wing. She tucked the phone away and glanced down at the exits to the exhibit. After a minute the two guards in sight answered their radios and dashed off to assist their coworkers.

This had been the hardest part of the plan. She had no idea how long they'd be distracted. All she could do was tell herself to do everything as quickly as possible. No mistakes. Get the jewel, get out. She knew the defenses.

A dull buzz was in Anna's head as she touched down on the ground, and shaking her head didn't clear it. Neither did smacking her temple with her palm. Gritting her teeth, Anna pushed forward, walking up to the jewel's case.

Just glass. The real issue was the motion detector in the stand, which would go off if a particularly heavy person was approaching it. That would activate the light grid around the case, and if something crossed a beam, the alarms went off.

_Anna had sold them the design herself._

Getting up to the case was an exercise in patience, forcing herself to move as slowly as possible without it turning into a performance. Once there, it was all too easy to cut the glass and reach in, plucking the jewel from its pedestal.

"A."

Anna spun around, looking wildly. No one. Eyes up to the ceiling. No one. She was alone. A sweat broke out on her forehead and she tried to keep herself from hyperventilating, backing up into the jewel case.

The glass slid off the pedestal and smashed into the floor.

The lights went out, replaced by dim red glows. Anna broke into a run towards her harness, but a wall of beams lit up in front of her.

_This wasn't part of the plan!_

Solid light. Sizzling. Cutting her off from her escape route. Trapping her with the case. it was appropiate, in a sad way. She'd trapped her in a defense system much like this. Apparently its use was spreading. They hadn't mentioned installing this. No one had. In her preparations she'd calculated that if the alarms went off she had roughly two minutes before the guards were back on-scene. The seconds were counting down in her head.

There was no way through. No way, except.. hers.

_Fly or burn trying. _

Tucking the jewel into her pocket, Anna exhaled and studied the beams. Her vision was blurring.

The first few beams were easy. Duck, move carefully, put her weight on the floor. Limbs snaked through the lights and she was halfway out when she slipped.

She twisted, slammed both hands down onto the floor behind her. She was caught in a crab-like posture, back arched, bent over a laser beam.

Thirty seconds.

It took her everything just to keep herself where she was. Her feet slowly slid forward, unwillingly lowering her, and with a furious surge of concentration she forced them back and under, bent knees. One hand rose slowly, sliding over the beam. She'd have to put all her weight onto her knees and keep the rest of her vertical until she could pull herself over. Her muscles were screaming at her. She'd never done anything close to this.

Ten.

Inch by inch she pulled her other hand off the floor, supporting herself by her fingers, then fingertips, then.. like a miracle, raising both hands off the floor. Holding herself up over the beam.

She collapsed.

A distant explosion cracked the skyglass. Anna slammed into the ground, a searing pain in her back. The power was out. Back up plan: JaneDoe had activated. Spasming on the floor, Anna scrambled to her feet, ignoring the wailing of her knees and lunged for her harness, sliding into it clumsily and only half-strapped in when the lights came back on. Forgoing safety for _getting the hell out of here_, she began to pull herself up. Her back was on fire.

Seconds after she squirreled into the vents, the doors burst open and security ran into the room. Indistinct yelling. She climbed.

Anna dropped out of the vent onto her chair, vaguely thankful she had placed it there or else she may have cracked her head on the floor in the state she was in. Tearing off her beanie, she took a few minutes to stand, limping over to the diamond-blue box on top of the kitchen table. The jewel went in with the rest. She tore the turtleneck off, noting the diagonal hole in the back.

Another failure.

The bathroom mirror revealed her suspicions- a long red line stretched diagonally across her back. It stung, but it didn't sear. It looked like a welt more than anything else, but it was probably a burn. Her hands went to the medicine cabinet, grasped a handful of pills, and popped them back. A quick shower, pajama clothes, and she collapsed into her bed. It was then when she finally noticed.

She was cold. So cold.

It burned inside her like a venom, snaking through her arms and torso.

_Cold. _

It was happening again. Anna forced her eyes open, her breathing shallow. She forced herself to take deep breaths, scrambling off the mattress. Clammy. Sick.

Anna stumbled out the door, grasping at her throat. She had to purge. She had to get it out of her system. Falling to her knees her forehead slammed into the floor and she heaved, vomiting her stomach onto the hallway floor. It wasn't enough. Now her throat burned. She had to close the door. She had to lock the door. She had to get out.

Somehow she made it to the ground floor, clutching at her shirt, tearing it off. She needed to be found. She needed to be found. Not as Fox. They couldn't track her back to her condo. That was for _her._

Anna broke into a blind run through the night, ignoring the pelting of icy wind on her skin. There was no one around. No one to find her. No one to identify her. Which one was more important? She broke free of the darkness and ran out into the lights.

_"Young female, around 20, ...almost naked at the site of an accident. No form of identity on her, we're going with Jane Doe for now. Paramedics found her unresponsive and not breathing... they're attempting defillibration... but we've got the go ahead to classify her as deceased."_

_"Cause of death?"_

_"Overdose."_

* * *

_"Hm," Olaf said. "That's sad. I wonder if that would have happened if you had been there?"_


End file.
